“Brazen: Rebel Ladies Who Rocked the World,” by Penelope Bagieu. Trans. Montana Kane. 296 pp. First Second. Cloth, $24.99; paper, $17.99. Ages 13+.
Thanks to Fables Books, 215 South Main Street in downtown Goshen, Indiana, for providing Commons Comics with books to review.
“Brazen: Rebel Ladies Who Rocked the World” is a powerhouse collection of 29 biographical comics about women from around the world who got things done—or, in some cases, are still at it. Comics bios can be difficult to pull off: I’ve seen a lot of clunky ones that fail to use the genre to its best effect, and get squashed by the weight of wordy exposition. Penelope Bagieu, however, is a master of the genre. Her instinct for the arc of a life is spot-on, well-balanced by emotionally dense visuals that keep the story moving, while also conveying humor and compassion.
Take for example, the first three panels of the book, which introduce Clementine Delait, a bearded lady born in eighteenth-century France:
Thanks to Fables Books, 215 South Main Street in downtown Goshen, Indiana, for providing Commons Comics with books to review.
Lewis in 1965 and 2015. Image from “Colorlines”: https://www.colorlines.com/articles/john-lewis-recreated-selma-march-comic-con-full-costume
In 2008, when Andrew Aydin was a young staffer answering phones for Congressman John Lewis’s re-election campaign, he told his colleagues that he was heading to a comics convention after the campaign season wound down. Aydin received the usual ridicule about costumes and kids’ stuff, but Lewis came to his defense, citing how the comic book “MLK and the Montgomery Story” helped fuel the civil rights movement. Five years later, he published “March, Book One,” co-written by Aydin, and illustrated by fellow Hoosier (although Arkansas-born) Nate Powell, the first of three volumes about Lewis’s history and role in the Civil Rights movement.
“I believe in this format,” Lewis told “The LAist” when asked what he was able to accomplish in comics that he hadn’t in the two memoirs he had published before “March.” “You are able to make it real, make it plain, make it simple for young people and people not so young to understand. It’s drama—high drama. That’s what the civil rights movement was all about—drama.”
Lewis recreated that drama for a new generation at the 2015 San Diego Comic-Con International, when he cosplayed his younger self walking across the Edmund Pettus Bridge in 1965. He found a similar jacket and backpack, and filled the backpack with “two books, a toothbrush, toothpaste, an apple and an orange,” according to a recent tribute article in the “New York Times.” Lewis walked a half mile across the convention center, followed by a horde of kids who had read “March,” and were as awed by Lewis as if he were Superman in the flesh. By the time he had finished this version of his march, he had gathered more than 1000 followers, even more than the original 600 who were there for a peaceful protest on a day later called “Bloody Sunday.”
Here’s a link to my review of “March 3,” which came out in 2016. You can also read my reviews of the first two volumes here and here. We’ll miss you John Lewis. Thank you for the many generations of kids you’ve taught to get into the type of “good trouble, necessary trouble” the US needs right now.
“Spring Rain: A Graphic Memoir of Love, Madness, and Revolutions,” by Andy Warner. St. Martin’s/Griffin, January 28, 2020. 208 pp. Paperback, $19.95. Adult.
Thanks to Fables Books, 215 South Main Street in downtown Goshen, Indiana, for providing Commons Comics with books to review. Visit the store or contact them at fablesbooks@gmail.com to find or order this or any book reviewed on this blog.
Note: St. Martin’s/Griffin Books sent me a free copy of this book.
Andy Warner opens his new memoir “Spring Rain” with a disclaimer: “Memory is a tricky business.” We watch his plane fly into Beirut, Lebanon, and see his younger self make his way through customs and the airport. It’s 2005, he’s twenty-one, and he’s visiting Beirut as an American study-abroad student. Present-day Warner explains that he’s been reading through old diaries from his semester abroad to piece together the time in his life that we’re watching and reading. “It’s hard to reread,” he admits. “I come off like an idiot.”
